


Little Brothers

by Copperonthetongue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Death, Character Study, Except Ramsay, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Lost Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Nobody is a total asshole, Other, Siblings, Viserys actually has feels, author fails at tagging, character exploration, not all families are happy though, so many feels, what it means to be family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 15:19:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13297647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: Nobody knows what hurts you better than your family.





	Little Brothers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Viserys muses on what was, and what he hopes will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping to add a bit of depth to some of the less explored character relationships from the series. Comments are love and your thoughts are always welcome.

It was hot, miserably, eternally hot and the overpowering smell of the seemingly countless and omnipresent Dothraki horses made Viserys wrinkle his nose in revulsion. They had at last stopped their relentless march at a small watering hole to allow the horses to drink and the women to fill their water-skins, and the delight and relief surging through the khalasaar was almost physically palpable. Everyone was happy, relieved and full of good cheer.

 

Except for Viserys, that was. He wasn’t delighted at all. How could he be? He was surrounded by disrespectful savages and their endless, stinking horses and slaves. Worse than that, was that he was forced to watch his exquisite little sister be defiled by that..that filthy brute he’d been made to barter her away to. It did not sit easily with him. Not one bit. It never actually had, despite what he’d said to his sweet sister. Nor did her ever-growing contentment with the situation he had put her into. 

 

She was not simply ….enduring here as he had intended. She was thriving. As if somehow she didn’t need him at all, anymore. He feared that when he was finished with the Dothraki and could rid himself of the Khal once and for all, perhaps Dany would not be as joyful as he had once imagined she would be. He would not be her hero, now. Her brave lover, come to rescue her. She would not thank him now for making her a widow.

That was not to say he wouldn’t sell her all over again were he presented with the same choices…. but he didn’t have to like it. It had been a necessity, nothing more and had it been possible he would never have done it. He’d simply had no choice. She was all he had left of any value. She should have been his. She was MEANT to be his queen, but just like their dead mother’s crown he’d had to sell her away to serve the greater good of their house, to avenge their dead and bring justice to the traitors who had usurped their birthright. HIS birthright, and nothing could stand in the way of that goal. Nothing. Not even Dany’s tear filled purple eyes. 

 

His own lingered on Dany, who moved easily amongst the Dothraki in her ugly leathers, the ugly things were dingy and dirt brown against her shining pale skin and somehow she was smiling as if she were happy there n the filth with the barbarians. Perhaps she was, though the very idea of such a thing made his stomach turn with rage and disgust. He could not blame her however. She had no memory of Westeros, after all. No recollection of her true family, of her true PLACE in the world. She’d never known anything but their penniless, humiliating exile. 

 

She didn’t know what it meant to be a Targaryen, and Viserys had no idea how to show her. He could not give her the precious memories he had, the ones that let him hold his head up high even when men spat on him, and called him Bigger King. He did not allow himself to hear their mockery, their slurs. Instead he cast his mind backward and remembered the crowds that had once cheered them when Rhaegar had rode him through the streets of King’s Landing, clasped safe and warm in front of him on his tall white destrier, Vhagar. If he closed his eyes he could still smell the lemon oil that Rhaegar had used on his bridle and leathers, and feel the soft brush of his brother’s silver hair against his cheek as he leaned down to him and murmured in his ear. “ Look at them, Little Brother. They are ours, and we are theirs. “

 

How could he ever find the words to tell her what it felt like when the smallfolk had thrown flowers in their path as they passed and held their hands up to them as if they were the sun, and all they wished was to touch their brilliance …even if it was only once. He could not give her their Mother’s smile, the scent of her perfume or the rough warmth of their brother’s hands. They were gone, everything was gone and all that remained to them was memory. Just like Westeros. All because of the Usurper and the Lannisters. 

 

He’d never been good with such things, sweet words had never come easily to him, unlike Rhaegar who had always seemed to know the right thing to say in any situation, Viserys was cursed with a talent for saying the exact wrong thing at the worst moment possible. It had never failed to made Rhaegar laugh, even when he was exasperated with the consequences of Viserys leaden tongue and it’s penchant for getting them both into trouble. When he closed his eyes, he could sometimes still hear Rhaegar’s silvery laughter…bright and merry and full of amusement at whatever childish disaster he’d once again had to pluck Viserys out of, and there had been so many, yet he’d never been angry. Not once. 

 

Just thinking his name made something twist painfully in Viserys’ chest. He missed him. Rhaegar’s death still cut him as deep as a knife blade, as if it was only yesterday that Ser Warrik had come into the hall at Dragonstone and laid his brother’s crushed and blood stained helm, wrapped in a tattered Targaryen banner at their mother’s feet. He could still remember the look on her face when she’d laid her eyes on it, as if the light inside her had simply gone out all at once. She hadn’t made a single sound as she’d looked at it, though Ser Warrik was weeping as if it was his own son who had died and not his King. She’d knelt after a long moment and unwrapped it gently, and then she’d carefully picked the battered thing up with her delicate, pale hands, clutching it to her breast above her babe-heavy belly. She’d been still as a statue for a moment, and then without a word she had simply walked away from them both, leaving Viserys behind. Alone. 

There was a terrible, aching, and empty space inside him where Rhaegar should have been but would never be again. It hurt, like a phantom limb that had been cut away but which still remembered what it felt like to be whole. All these years later, and the pain of his death, no….his _murder_ had never once wavered. His all consuming hatred for the ones responsible for it all had burned steady and hot inside him since the moment he had realized what that bloody helm truly meant. 

His brother would never again ruffle his hair or sing him to sleep, would never pick him up and swing him around so high that Viserys could almost imagine what it would have felt like to be a real Dragon, with wide leathery wings that cleaved the sky and breath of fire. He was gone forever, all because of that stupid northern girl. Because of that Baratheon traitor. He had vowed that night that he would make them pay for what they’d done to his family. All of them. Stark and Lannister and Baratheon and Arryn. They would pay in blood, and in fire for their crimes, he would raze their houses to the ground and salt the earth afterwards. Their names would be forgotten, erased as if they had never been. His family would be avenged if it was the last thing he did in this world, he vowed it to all Seven gods. He would _NEVER_ forget. Never forgive. 

Yet to do that, he had to have an army, and the only coin he had with which to barter for that army…had been Dany. She would understand one day. She had to. Being a King meant making decisions for the greater good. He couldn’t let sentiment keep him from doing what was needed to reclaim their birthright. To avenge what they had lost. She would understand. She had to. 

He was the Dragon.


End file.
